As the Internet matures, more and more functions, such as email, calendar, file storage, authentication, etc., have moved to the World Wide Web on the Internet. With the increasing availability of high-speed Internet access everywhere, customers are shifting their priority to Internet-based mobile scenarios, especially with wireless Internet connection. Thus, many mobile computing devices are now equipped with wireless Internet access capabilities, and there is a proliferation of new Internet devices in a wide range of form factors, such Web cell phones (i.e., cell phones with the ability to connect to the Internet wirelessly), etc. There are now millions of on-the-go people who access their data, documents, and e-mail from their cell phones and other hand-held devices.
Even though mobile devices provide their users with the freedom to access the Internet or other networks without being tied to their desktop computers, most small mobile devices, such as PDA's or Web cell phones, have very small display screens, and it is somewhat inconvenient and often difficult to read regular documents (e.g., a spread sheet) on such small screens. For this reason, users of small mobile devices may want to print the documents out and read the printed documents. After all, paper is a great viewing media that is portable, easy to read, and easy to share. In addition, it requires no power. The combination of rich contents available on the Internet and the physical limitation of small devices means that users would want to print the contents from time to time at any place where they can access the content.
Currently there is, however, no convenient way for mobile device users to print documents when they are away from their desktop computers. Traditionally, it is difficult even for users of laptop computers to print documents while away from their offices. For instance, when a user carries her laptop to a different building of her company for a meeting, even if she can log onto the corporate intranet and retrieve a document she needs for the meeting, she may find that she is not able to print that document easily. In order to print the document on a printer in that building, she has to first discover which printers are in the building, select a printer that is close to her, and download the driver for that printer to her laptop. She then runs an appropriate application (e.g., Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.) for that particular document format, which renders the document into a printer-acceptable format and uses the print driver to print the document. When the user moves to a new location and wants to print on a different printer, she has to repeat the printer installation process.
In comparison with printing with laptops, it is even harder for users of small Internet devices to print documents. There is currently a diverse set of hardware and operating system platforms for those “thin-client” devices. Such diversity would make it very difficult to develop a robust set of printer drivers for each hardware/OS platform. Moreover, print rendering generally requires intensive CPU power and memory consumption. Many small mobile devices simply do not have the memory space to store the applications or the printer drivers or the processing power required for the printing operation.
Thus, what is needed is an effective solution for users of various types of mobile devices to print documents when and where they need the documents even if the devices are not connected directly to any printers or do not even have the capacity or software to handle the printing task.